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A new Legend of Zelda game has been a long time coming.  So much that when the trailer started running at the beginning of the press event, I was excited, but not all that surprised.  It was thrilling to see one of my childhood heroes, Shigeru Miyamoto, burst from behind a screen to demo the newest game in one of my favorite series of all time.  Other than the trouble with Deku Baba, the plant monster, the live demo was very exciting to see all the new bits that would be populating Link and Zelda’s new adventure.

I had such wonderful plans for my money: food, shelter, gas and toilet paper to name a few.  All of that changed however, when I played a selection of Nintendo’s lineup of games at E3 this year.  Nintendo was clearly the leader of this years E3 in terms of sheer volume of new game announcements and quality titles.  My Wii and DS are going to be working overtime and my wallet is already openly weeping.

One fine evening, Fallout 3 decided to go out for a drink.  So, it found a bar and started ordering some drinks.  After some time, a nice game called Borderlands came up and started ordering drinks for Fallout 3.  The next morning the two awoke next to each other with confused looks on their faces.  That is the story of how the newest gem from our good friends at Bethesda and Id entitled Rage was conceived.

Mafia II is a game that I have already discussed in the past, but at E3 I got the chance to get my hands on it and now I have more to say.  The good folks at 2K Games seem to have spun quite a yarn and while the gunplay was definitely functional, the thing that really impressed me about Mafia II was the atmosphere the game exudes.

Downloadable games always seem like they can be either very promising or an underdeveloped mess.  While at E3, I stopped by to see the good folks at Square Enix and got some hands-on time with Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.  Much to my delight, it’s looking like Lara’s latest adventure, though not a part of the main story, is going to be one co-op isometric-camera action title you won’t want to miss.

I walked onto the show floor for the first time ever and in an excited fervor, I head to the very first open controller I can find.  It just so happened that the game I grabbed was none other than Saw 2: Flesh and Blood.  Now, while I’m certainly not an apologist for the movie series, I very recently played through the first game and was eager to see what was different about the new game.  As it turns out, they’ve taken the original and put it under a microscope to see how they can make it a better experience.

At the end of the Nintendo media briefing, they allowed us to take a second to get our hands on their amazing new handheld system.  While what I was was characters doing short animations on the 3D screen, I was still quite impressed.  Nothing could have prepared me, however, for what I would see when I got to the front of the line visiting Nintendo’s booth on the show floor.  Stepping up onto the platform where they had a line of 3DS demos running, I thought I may be seeing the same demo I saw before, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Day two of E3 is done and there is only one more day of gaming goodness to go, but I started my day off the right way with a visit to Valve where I was treated to a glimpse of what Portal 2 will look like.

Though the preview was short it made a lasting impression and left me repeating the words "oh f*ck" over and over again to myself as I headed out of the West Hall meeting room.

Alright, the first day of E3 is in full swing: we live blogged the Nintendo and Sony media briefings and while Hamsterman2049 is off running around the North Hall today I am in South Hall at the LA Convention center and patiently waiting for my turn to play the (due out in November 2010) Ubisoft title: Assassin's Creed Broherhood.

It's Monday morning and I'm in LA to cover what may be the most new-product-announcing Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) event in years.

Microsoft showed off Natal I mean Kinect last night at their pre-press conference event last night with help from Cirque du Soleil and all I can say is "spaceponcho FTW!" Most of the games they showed off for the new hardware/software bundle are title types that we have already seen on the Wii - many of which were not very successful on that platform by the way - and a few that are unique to the Kinect experience. It will be interesting to actually see in person (if that happens for me this year - as I got the bums rush at the Microsoft booth last year) how Kinect really works and if spaceponcho is required or just value added!